It was hindered by the fact that new threads could not be started although posts could be added to existing threads. I can only guess that the initial intention was that there had to be some control over what books were discussed if that made any sense.

I know I would have started a number of threads back then, but seeing that I couldn't start a new thread, I found other ways to entertain myself.

Maybe a more generic "Review" forum, where people can review anything (including books) would be better than just a "Book review" forum?

Just to play devil's advocate (no pun intended... ), what else would be reviewed in this section? If you are thinking software packages, these might not be available across all project, & then we run into the old "here's a generic forum, but people post FreeBSD-specific threads in them..." problem.

Although it may be considered overkill & potentially low-volume, I think that a book-specific section would be useful.

It was hindered by the fact that new threads could not be started although posts could be added to existing threads. I can only guess that the initial intention was that there had to be some control over what books were discussed if that made any sense.

I know I would have started a number of threads back then, but seeing that I couldn't start a new thread, I found other ways to entertain myself.

People should be able to start new threads in the book reviews. I can think of at least
10 books which are more or less BSD specific that I was reviewing on other forums and
that are not even mentioned on the old bsdforums.org book review.
If the community is changing for the better then all aspects of the forum should be audited
and policies reviewed. I sound like somebody who was using too much OpenBSD